The Art of Reading Andre Dubus: We Don’t Have to Live Great Lives

The nine chapters of the
126-page novella alternate between the viewpoints of Richie Stowe, a serious
twelve-year-old who plans to become a priest, and the other members of the
boy's family. The story takes place over the course of a single day and is
centered on the revelation that Richie's divorced father plans to marry the
ex-wife of Richie's older brother—the father's own former daughter-in-law.
Such a plot could easily become soap opera, but with his plain language and
astute characterization Dubus weaves a tale that leaves the reader feeling, if
not affection, then at least empathy for every member of the family.

In Voices From the
Moon, Dubus balances the themes
and preoccupations that define his oeuvre—religion, guilt, compassion, sex,
spirituality, tenderness, acceptance, violence, and morality—and he does it
from the shifting viewpoints of a father, son, mother, daughter, husband, wife,
and lover. They are normal people doing mundane things, but while these
characters might appear simple, they are not simpletons.

Near the end of the story, Richie's long-suffering mother
voices what sound like some of Dubus's own philosophies about people and life.
In an attempt to comfort her eldest son, who is shocked and distressed that his
own father would marry his ex-wife, the mother explains that she likes her
coworkers because they don't have any "delusions" about life. "We don't have to
live great lives," she says, "we just have to understand and survive the ones
we've got." This epiphany is the kind of earnest, audacious blanket of grace
that Dubus was never afraid to cast over his characters.

The winter I first read Dancing After Hours,I did not know—and would not until I bought
his collection of essays, Meditations
From a Moveable Chair (Knopf, 1998)—that Dubus was bound to a
wheelchair, a "cripple," as he put it, for the last thirteen years of his life.

On July 23, 1986, while driving home from Boston, Dubus
stopped to help Luz and Luis Santiago, a brother and sister from Puerto Rico
who had collided with a motorcycle that had been abandoned on the highway.
While Dubus struggled to communicate with the Santiagos, usher the pair off the
road, and flag down more help, an oncoming car traveling nearly sixty miles an
hour struck Dubus and Luis. The young man, only twenty-three, was killed
instantly. Dubus was thrown over the car's hood and landed in a crumpled,
bleeding mass on the other side—alive but with thirty-four broken bones.
Moments before the impact, Dubus had pushed Luz out of harm's way, likely
saving her life. Yet he did so at great sacrifice: Dubus lost his left leg
below the knee and his right leg was crushed to the point of uselessness.

The accident was a massive
blow to the ex-marine, who loved physical exercise (especially running and weight
lifting), and who was, in some ways, defined by his physicality. Two years
later, Dubus's third wife left him and took their two young daughters with her.
Overwhelmed and in continual pain, he slipped into a dark depression and, for a
time, struggled to write fiction.

Dubus slowly regained his confidence by writing essays and
through the support he received from the writers who gathered every Thursday
night at his house. When he did tackle fiction again, what he wrote—the
stories that would become Dancing
After Hours—could easily have spiraled into bitterness and
self-pity. Instead, his work grew even more generous, more empathetic.

About a year
after I discovered Dancing After Hours,I sleuthed out a mailing address for Dubus and wrote him a letter of
gratitude. A few weeks later I learned that, at the age of sixty-two, Dubus had
died of heart failure. The date was February 24, 1999. A month or so passed,
and then a letter with the return address "Dubus" eerily appeared in my
mailbox. I nervously opened it and found that it was from Andre Dubus III. He
had written to say he had found my letter, and then he did a beautiful thing:
He thanked me for thanking his dad.

The first time I met Dubus III in person, he told me about
the unexpected way his father had influenced his art."It's not his fine work," he told me, "but
seeing him walk daily into his downstairs study in our tiny rented house and
try to write something beautiful for someone he would probably never even meet.
It's that image that gave me permission as a young man to view writing as a
legitimate line of work to devote one's life to."

Andre Dubus cared a great deal for people. There is no better
evidence than the words he put to paper. The best of his work leaves us feeling
uneasy and vulnerable from the shock of recognition—nervous that this man not
only knows our secrets, but that he might understand them better than we do.
Though Dubus himself may have been as complex as the characters he created, his
stories offer what only great art can: They provide counsel for the heart.

Joshua Bodwell is a Maine-based journalist and fiction writer. His
profile of Richard Ford appeared in the November/December 2006 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.